


that's what you're good at

by ghost_teeth



Series: the fall will probably kill you [2]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Hand & Finger Kink, Identity Porn, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Porn with Feelings, Semi-Public Sex, a truly absurd nickname, post-s2, references to slavery and past child abuse, the helmet comes off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 17:07:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29795121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghost_teeth/pseuds/ghost_teeth
Summary: Cobb sits back and gives the man a once-over (or a twice-over, maybe a twentieth-over). The man’s got an absolutely remarkable nose, and he’s very alone. Cobb wants to build him a house, feed him slices of fruit, lock him in a safe and bury him in the sand. His eyes are so, so dark.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Series: the fall will probably kill you [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2190045
Comments: 25
Kudos: 142





	that's what you're good at

**Author's Note:**

> WELP, here it is, another installment of lonely-middle-aged-men-jerking-it-in-public-also-lots-of-talking. love you folks.
> 
> if you haven't read "for a moment there, i thought we were in trouble," you may want to read that one first. :)
> 
> (before you come for me, yes, there are canonical rabbits in the sw universe.)

The second time he hears it—that is, the first time after the _actual_ first time—he’s elbow-deep in the hot guts of a fried vaporator, half a desiccated sand skitter in one hand and the broken-off handle of a cooking spoon in the other. 

It’s ugly stinking work, using the spoon handle to winkle cooked bits of skitter out of the machinery, feeling around with careful fingertips for the places where the stupid unfortunate thing gnawed through the wiring, but it’s work that needs doing. It’s simple if-then sort of work: the skitter chewed through the wiring and fried the vaporator; if Cobb doesn’t get in there and fix it, then he won’t have water for his caf. He enjoys the simplicity of this. He’s come to understand that his life in this place is a rough tapestry of such small needful tasks, and any other life he’s ever known—any bigger, rougher life with stains and unfinished edges—has been folded up and stashed in the back of the closet with his spare linens.

There’s no wind to speak of when the noise bleeds into the afternoon, not even a lazy breeze to stir the stale bedsheets he’s trying to air out on the line, and maybe that’s a blessing, as he might never have heard it otherwise. 

It’s a low sound, the sort of sound you feel in the cartilage of your joints more than precisely _hear_ , and he knows it for what it is instantly. From the hacking stutter of the engine hum, the speeder’s in bad shape, and it’s not one Cobb recognizes. He’s a listener, always has been. He’s got an ear for tunes and voices and names, and more than that, he’s carefully committed to memory every sound native to Mos Pelgo, the specific rattle of every generator and the distinctive whine of each of the town’s three speeder bikes. This sounds like none of them, not to mention that Cobb’s heard no vehicle come or go through the long quiet hours of the morning and afternoon.

His home is small, a white pimple of a structure half dug into the sand like most Tatooine dwellings, but there’s a ladder to the roof and it’s a better vantage point than the ground. Cobb leaves a layer or two of skin from his palms behind on the sun-baked metal rungs, and it’s hardly worth the trouble—all he manages to spy from the low roof is a distant tail of unsettled dust marking the strange speeder’s passage. Slowly frying like an egg atop his own roof, Cobb watches until the sand settles completely and a trail is discernible, a pale narrow ribbon carved into the dunes. 

It’s the funniest thing, he thinks as he dashes sweat from his eyebrows, but it seems as if the speeder had gotten within spitting distance of Mos Pelgo before suddenly hanging a violent U-turn and disappearing back the way it’d come. 

Cobb spends the remainder of the afternoon and evening tending to the vaporator, but not before retrieving his blaster from his bedside table and tucking it into the back of his trousers. Sure, the safety’s gone a bit so-so lately and he’s like as not to accidentally ventilate his own gallbladder while he works, but you can never be too prepared when it comes to strangers.

* * *

It drags him out of a bad nap not eight hours later, the third time—Cobb’s fallen asleep by accident in a chair, tipping over sideways under the weight of the day halfway through his evening whiskey. 

He wakes up sore and disoriented, forehead mashed into the cool stucco of the adjacent wall and drool crusting his beard, and for a bizarre second he thinks he’s hearing the sound of his own teeth grinding. By the time he realizes that it’s actually the distant tormented whine of a dying speeder engine being pushed to speeds it has no business striving for, he’s already out of his chair.

The rest of Cobb’s whiskey spilled into his lap while he was passed out, leaving a highly suspicious-looking stain on the crotch of his underwear, but in his scramble to get up to the roof he doesn’t bother trying to clean it or even pull his trousers back on. He only barely remembers to snag his blaster from the floor on his way. 

Going to sleep when it’s still light and waking up in the dark always leaves him feeling as if his entire life has shifted just a few inches to the left, like nothing is where he remembers putting it and maybe his name isn’t spelled quite the same way it was yesterday. The air is cool now, flirting with cold, and there’s only one moon visible tonight, hanging in the sky all swollen and self-satisfied like a well-fed tick. Tatooine nights are never truly dark; the fine sand catches the moonlight and throws it back, and it’s more than enough to see by, to trace the new second speeder trail that winds over the swelling sands to its terminus. 

The speeder’s a crooked, trembling silhouette at the foot of a dune, not half a klick from the far edge of town. It’s listing obviously to the side even from this distance, wheezing and snarling asthmatically into the night, and Cobb wonders if the figure astride it might finally call time of death on the wretched machine and head into town for shelter or a lift. 

It’s impossible to tell much about the rider from here—possibly humanoid, just as likely not, maybe hooded against the sand. All the same, as he squints at the far-off figure from the roof of his house, Cobb has the strangest feeling that they’re making eye contact, the two of them, with no way of even knowing for sure where one another’s eyes are. It’s not the first time in recent memory he’s had this feeling, this static crackle of mutual awareness, and he’s struck with the wild impulse to leap the ankle-twisting distance from rooftop to ground and sprint for the other side of town, trousers be damned. His blaster is warm and heavy in his hand.

The stranger saves him from his own haywire impulses by somehow coaxing the speeder into motion again, and Cobb watches helplessly as the speeder swings around to limp back the way it came, vanishing over the brow of the dune. 

Sounds can be strange in the desert, all at once too loud and gone too quickly, funneled through canyons and smothered by dunes. The roar of the engine is lost almost as soon as the speeder crests the rise, and in the windless night Cobb thinks he might be able to number every little nighttime critter foraging in the scrub as far as Mos Eisley. He feels terribly obvious and alone, standing atop his roof in whiskey-soaked underwear with his bony bird-legs glowing in the night.

He could take his own speeder and give chase, he knows. He’d easily make double that half-dead clunker’s top speed on his own bike, and there’d be more than enough light to track it for eyes that know how to look. And yet, although shivering with adrenaline and cold, Cobb is steadied by an odd and ambiguous certainty that the stranger will be back, for better or worse. 

All he has to do is wait, watch, listen.

* * *

It’s pink and early, still cool, and Jo’s waiting on the porch when Cobb stumbles out to take another whack at the vaporator. She’s puffing on an oily-smelling cigarra, a habit she picked up far too young and has been swearing up and down for years that she’s going to quit. “We’ve got a creeper or something,” she says by way of greeting. Despite her baby face, she smokes like the crustiest old spacer imaginable, the cig sticking to her bottom lip like magic and bobbing jauntily when she talks.

“We’ve got a what now?” Cobb scrubs his sleeve under his nose and squints balefully at the sunrise. It’s a hard old world for a man with no means of brewing his morning caf.

“A creeper,” Jo repeats. “Someone’s been skulking around town. I hear them buzzing by at all hours, but they never come into town. Uluq says he’s seen speeder trails outside the cantina.” She takes the cigarra out of her mouth, taps the ash off, and puts it back in one fluid motion. 

“The cantina,” Cobb repeats slowly. “And nobody’s seen who it is? Nobody’s tried to get ‘hold of them?”

Jo shrugs. “Uluq says he tried to get a look through the window. Didn’t really see much, though. Too far.” She slides him a considering look from beneath the bill of her hat. “Few of us’ve been thinking of taking turns on patrol. Though I would’ve thought that’d be more your deal to organize.”

“Not angling for a performance review this early in the morning, Jo, but thanks all the same.” Cobb doesn’t remember her passing him the half-smoked cigarra, but when he looks down it’s nestled between his fingers. He takes a drag and shudders. Awful, but the tabac will have to do in the absence of caf. He sighs. “I’m already on it, Jo, you know I am.”

“I know,” Jo says. Her smile is bright and sharp and sudden as blaster fire.

* * *

“In or out for the night, Marshal?” 

Cobb isn’t drinking. Maybe later, but not yet. It’s a night that demands his full and unadulterated attention, he can tell by the way the day dawned too quiet and the evening came on slow and sneaky like a rumor rippling through a crowd. There’s a twitch in his fingers, a buzzing pressure in his sinuses that has nothing to do with liquor. The night is taking a deep breath before—something. 

Uluq’s making his rounds before closing up, gathering up glassware and pushing in chairs in his usual way. It’s a familiar scene, sure, but tonight, something about the routine feels like holo Cobb’s seen before. _In or out for the night, Marshal?_ Uluq says, and Cobb will say _In, I think,_ and then—what? Something comes next, he’s sure of it, some step in a dance he forgot he knows.

“Marshal?” Uluq prompts again. He’s more than halfway out the door now, impatience clear in the lines of his craggy face.

“In, I think,” Cobb responds on cue, waving a hand. “Suspect you could use an extra eyeball on the place tonight, anyway.”

Uluq grunts. “S’pose I could.” He gives Cobb a long look that weighs uncomfortably on his shoulders, much like the one he’d received from Jo only that morning. “Appreciate it, Marshal.” The Weequay nods his good-night just before the door slides closed behind him.

Buildings breathe when there’s nobody in them, sighing as they heave and settle. Cobb closes his eyes for a moment, breathes in time with the old cantina and tries to remember when he last spent the night here. It’s been a while, a month or more. Used to be, he’d spend a night a week here, maybe every other week, but lately the appeal of sitting in the dark and sharing silence with the sand-mites gnawing the foundation has gone a bit stale. Recently, he’s begun to feel a bit like a trespasser in all the spaces that were once familiar to him, as if he’s constantly trying to sneak up on himself. The feeling unsettles him, makes his entire skeleton itch. 

Again, he feels it before he hears it, the unsteady growl of the speeder engine, and before he can think better of it, he’s up and disengaging the door lock. The door rattles open on its track and Cobb stares out into the night for a moment, seeing nothing and hearing little more than that. He drifts back to the bar, preemptively counts out a small handful of creds and stacks them on the counter. For a moment, he considers the pitcher of spotchka glowing softly on the counter, but decides against it. Spotchka’s started to disagree with him lately. There’s a corked carafe of something violently orange on a shelf behind the bar, and he takes that instead, along with two glasses. 

He installs himself in a back booth with a good sightline to the door, arranges the carafe and the glasses and his blaster neatly on the table in front of him. Whether it’s to be a toast or a firefight, the sense of inevitability is strangely reassuring, in its way. It’s been the nature of his life that Cobb’s had to get comfortable sitting on a fence, living in that moment of _wait-and-see_. He’s always had good balance.

It’s impossible to tell exactly how close the speeder gets before the engine hiccups and sobs and goes silent; the sound of it echoes strangely off the squat buildings that make up Mos Pelgo, folding back in on itself and spiraling back out again. 

After that, there’s a long stretch of nothing. The silence feels swollen, ready to pop. Cobb waits.

He indulges in a bracing deep breath and a long blink, and suddenly there’s an ambulatory pile of dirty laundry in the doorway. It’s impossible to tell if the thing has arms, but a dusty pair of bug-eyed goggles seems to indicate the presence of a face somewhere in there. 

Cobb smiles sweetly and levels his blaster at the thing. “Evening. Our creeper, I presume.”

There’s a poncho (standard issue for bedraggled travelers on Tatooine), or maybe several ponchos, a cowl and scarf, an indeterminate assortment of other third- or fourth-hand garments. “Your... _what_?” the creeper rasps. Fluent in Standard, at least.

Cobb emphatically thumbs back the safety. “Lemme see some hands, if you got ‘em,” he drawls. 

There’s a commotion within the mountain of cast-offs, then two gloved hands emerge from either side of the thing like spiders from an egg sac. 

“Just the two?” Cobb’s really only half joking. 

A sharp little plosive that might be irritation or amusement ruffles the cowl beneath the goggles, and the gloved fingers wriggle pointedly. “Just the two.” The voice is a thirsty, sanded-down ruin, barely more than a whisper—it’s the same voice as every underprepared, overexposed offworlder that’s ever stumbled into every little nowhere-cantina begging for water and directions. Unremarkable. And yet, and yet—

“Better come in, then,” Cobb sighs, and makes a great show of re-engaging the safety on his blaster and placing it daintily back on the table, still within easy reach. He folds his hands in front of him, primarily to hide the jitter in his fingers. There’s a tremble in the air now, a hum of potential, and the new arrival is still hesitating in the doorway as if pressing against an invisible barrier. Cobb leans forward in his seat and bares his teeth in a way that feels too wide to be a smile. “C’mon. Piss or get off the pot, creeper.”

It’s almost annoying how slowly the bundled-up thing creeps into the cantina, covered head swinging conspicuously from side to side as if expecting to be jumped by concealed assailants. Cobb barely checks the impulse to cluck and smooch at the stranger in the way he might coax a timid animal into eating from his hand. 

Once the stranger draws close enough that Cobb could reach out and brush the hem of the filthy poncho with his fingertips, Cobb nods at the bench opposite him. “Join me for a drink,” he says, and pours three fingers of the orange stuff into both glasses. It isn’t a question.

The stranger is lowering something into the booth, a bulky duffel the size of an adolescent child. It clanks like fetters against a prison wall, and the stranger slides carefully into the booth after it. The goggles tilt down toward the glass Cobb’s just filled. “Can I have some water instead?” There’s a soft, tacky sound from somewhere within the stranger’s cowl, maybe a dry tongue darting out to moisten dryer lips. “Please.”

“No,” Cobb says cheerily, and clinks his glass against the stranger’s, then tosses the drink back in one go. It tastes like an electrical fire that’s been put out with perfume, but he’s had worse things in his mouth. The stranger’s goggles seem to be tracking his movements as he drinks, watching the liquor’s journey from glass to hand to mouth, then ticking downward as Cobb swallows. “Go on, then. It’s only polite.” Cobb nods at the other glass without breaking eye contact with his own reflection in the goggles. 

The stranger’s gloved hands make a sudden reappearance, and for a sphincter-clenching instant Cobb thinks they might be going for the blaster laid out between them on the table, but no, they’re reaching for the filthy cowl, unwinding it slowly, so slowly. Cobb has the oddest feeling that the stranger is unwrapping hesitantly on his behalf, as if giving him every opportunity to say _never mind, put it back on, get yourself gone,_ and for one delirious second, Cobb’s tempted to take them up on the out he’s been offered. They’re teetering on this fence together, the two of them, about to topple into some unfamiliar yard.

The man’s hair is dark, uneven, filthy and sweated down flat. Cobb’s index finger touches his thumb, pinching nothing but air and memory. He feels oddly disarticulated, as if his hands have come detached at the wrists, his arms at the shoulders, feet at the ankles. 

The goggles are the last thing to go, shoved up awkwardly to the man’s hairline, and they leave identical red rings pressed into the skin around his eye sockets. Blinking owlishly against the dim light, he reaches for the full glass.

“Wait.” The man freezes, hand on the glass, Cobb’s fingers wrapped around his wrist. The leather of the glove is warm and beaten soft. “Wait,” Cobb says again, taking the glass out of the man’s hand and setting it aside. The man looks a touch disoriented, a little nauseous, almost concussed. His eyes are very, very dark. Cobb gives his wrist a squeeze before releasing him. “Alright. Alright. Let’s get you some water instead.”

He hopes his trip to the bar doesn’t look too much like the momentary retreat that it is. It’s just easier to breathe with a few feet between them.

When he returns to the table with water, the other glass is empty, sitting pointedly on the table in front of the man’s neatly folded hands. “Only polite,” the man says, and shrugs stiffly.

“Don’t blame me if you get a headache, then,” Cobb snorts, dropping back into his seat.

The man somehow manages to grimace with his entire body. “I’ve always got a headache lately. Can’t get much worse.” He accepts the glass of water anyway, drinking it in furtive, almost dainty little sips that strike Cobb as comically prim, as if he’s convinced that his thirst is somehow unseemly. 

Cobb doesn’t bother to be discreet in his staring. The man’s lips are so chapped by wind and sand that the bottom one’s split neatly down the middle and a rusty smear of blood is left behind on the glass when he drinks. There’s a mustache, horribly untrimmed, and days of stubble, though if Cobb had to hazard a guess, he’d say it’d be a sad scraggly affair if the man ever attempted a beard. Cobb wonders distantly if the man’s ever tried, and if anyone had the basic decency to take him aside and tell him there’s no shame in admitting defeat. Then again, Cobb supposes, it’s more likely that no one ever would’ve seen. 

He carefully catalogues each feature of the man’s face—cheeks, eyebrows, jaw, nose, chin—adds them together, and comes up with a sum: _Ordinary._

And then: _No._

Through it all, the man stares determinedly at the table, and Cobb tamps down the insane impulse to reach out, seize him by the ears and make him look up. Instead, he clears his throat and asks, “More water?” 

The water isn’t even half-drunk yet. The man shakes his head.

“Okay.” Cobb leans as far forward as the table will allow, trying to catch the man’s eyes. “You alone?”

“Yes.” It’s a dense word. There’s a tale there, maybe a hundred. 

“What can I do for you? What are you here for?”

The man exhales slowly, then nudges the empty glass toward Cobb. “Another drink,” he says, then finally, finally looks up. “Maybe a story, if you’ve got one.”

Cobb’s fairly certain his intestines have begun to slither around inside him of their own accord, coiling around his other organs like hungry snakes. He covers up a shiver by clearing his throat. “A story,” he repeats. He obliges the man’s request for another drink, if only for something to do with his hands, and pours himself one as well. “What kind of story?”

Sipping his drink, the man shrugs again. His affect is curiously flat in a way that seems almost painful, as if he’s making a constant effort to keep his face perfectly, perfectly still at all times. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Got all kinds of stories. Want a story about me?” Cobb grins against the nerves. “I love stories about me.”

“Sure.” Another sip, another shrug. He’s a perpetual shrug machine. Seems a man’s shoulders ought to eventually get tired from that much ambivalence.

“Or maybe a story about you?”

“Maybe both?” The man’s eyebrows twitch upward to punctuate the question. 

The snakes inside Cobb tighten around his guts almost painfully. He sits back and gives the man a once-over (or a twice-over, maybe a twentieth-over). The man’s got an absolutely remarkable nose, and he’s very alone. Cobb wants to build him a house, feed him slices of fruit, lock him in a safe and bury him in the sand. His eyes are so, so dark.

“Both, then,” Cobb agrees. He’s almost whispering. He’s not sure why. “Okay. Okay.”

It ought to be too different, too awkward, letting his mind weave a humid and indistinct fantasy around this man without the protective membrane of a ‘fresher door between them. But somehow, it isn’t. If anything, it’s easier, looking the man right in the face and hanging his imagination on the weary, pleading line between the man’s eyebrows. 

“Okay,” Cobb says again, and smiles carefully. When he lays his hand out palm-up on the table between them, the man seems not to understand for a long moment, but eventually two of his gloved fingers creep over Cobb’s thumb like the antennae of an insect feeling its way through the dark.

It’s to both their benefit that Cobb’s has been a life stitched together with neat little lies, the sort that’s almost the truth if you turn your head and squint out the corner of your eye. Over a lifetime, he’s become a true craftsman at the sort of small improvised tale that sands down the rough edges of a situation. It’s the sort of skill that makes you quick on your feet, makes you creative by necessity. 

(The overseer says _how old are you_ and the slave boy says _ten next week_ even though he’s probably thirteen because it’s safer to be younger in a place like this and he’s still so small and too skinny and anyway nobody’s numbering his birthdays. 

The slave boy’s mother wipes his bloody nose and says _did they beat you_ and the slave boy says _no_ because that’s not really what they did and he likes it better when his mother doesn’t cry.

An itinerant mechanic bound for anywhere-but-here says _how much do you know about speeders_ and the young man on the run says _plenty, sir_ not because he knows how to fix one but because he’s been hit by one before and knows plenty about that. He’s a quick learner.)

Marshal Cobb Vanth, gray and free and still too skinny, says, “So this is a true story,” and wraps his other hand tight around the man’s wrist again. 

“If it’s the one with the dragon, I’ve heard it before.” The man’s fingers twitch against Cobb’s thumb.

Cobb squeezes the man’s wrist once, part admonition for the interruption and part reassurance, and lets his eyes drift to the man’s side, or rather to the conspicuous absence there. _Take care of the Child._ “I don’t think that’s the right story for a night like this,” Cobb says. “This one’s gonna take place somewhere else. In Mos Espa, actually. Sort of a long time ago. Not _that_ long, mind, but long enough that you’ll have to excuse me if I take liberties with some of the details. This is the one with the night market and the thief. It’s the one where you told me your name.” Cobb’s hand slides down the man’s wrist toward the strap of his glove, and he teases the stitching at the edge of it with a fingernail.

“I never—”

“Yeah, you did,” Cobb says easily, and begins to work the strap free of its clasp, loosening it slowly. “Your name’s—” He fumbles for only a beat before his brain lands on something “—Rabbit.” 

Might’ve been a decade ago, maybe more. Some Sullustan meat-merchant had been hawking them in a narrow Mos Eisley street. Ash-rabbits, he’d called them, wild-caught on Sullust, two creds live and four if you wanted them butchered to order (“While you wait!”). There was a pen of the things, bruise-purple and sweet-eyed and quietly doomed. Light in the wallet but in the mood to treat himself, Cobb had bought one live, telling himself he’d butcher it personally later, but had promptly lost his grip on the wriggling thing when the Sullustan had handed it over. It crouched there on the ground for a second, stunned, and the merchant hissed for Cobb to _grab it, grab it._ The creature found its feet when Cobb floundered, though, and they both watched it scramble away and disappear into the crowd. “No refunds or replacements,” the merchant said quickly. “Shop policy. Tough break.” Cobb went hungry that night, and the next.

“That’s not my name,” says the man, frowning, and Cobb slips a thumb beneath the cuff of the glove. 

“Yes it is. I’m telling you it is.” It’s probably the eyes, Cobb thinks, or maybe the way the man’s head moves too much, or maybe the way he’s hunched in the booth as if waiting to be butchered to order for four creds _while you wait_. His pulse is quick beneath Cobb’s thumb, and Cobb rubs tiny circles into the skin of the man’s wrist. Soft, thin as eyelid-skin. “Anyway, who’s telling this story? You or me?”

“Alright, alright,” says the man whose name is Rabbit tonight whether he likes it or not. “Sorry. Tell me the story.”

Cobb sniffs in mock-indignation. “That’s what I thought.” He traces the lines of Rabbit’s wrist tendons, down toward his palm and back up, does it again when Rabbit shivers. “So this is the one about the night market in Mos Espa. Y’know, during the week of Boonta Eve. With the flags and all the candles and that horrible green stuff, you know, that spicy punch they sell in cones that always leak all over you. I guess I don’t have to tell you that, seeing as you’ve been there.”

“I have?” 

“Yep, you have. Long time ago,” Cobb says firmly. 

He can feel a small raised mound on the heel of Rabbit’s hand—a scar maybe? Not too old, by the feel of it. He pushes the glove down just a little bit, just enough to see. Yes, a scar, not old but not new, pale and oblong. It’s almost perfectly the size of Cobb’s index fingertip, and he takes a moment to appreciate this. Satisfying, he thinks, and pushes it gently, like a button. He’s not sure what result he expects it to produce.

“Anyway,” he continues, “I’m sort of young in this one. Sort of stupid. Selfish. Bit like now, but worse. Thought a ponytail might suit me at the time, which probably tells you all you need to know. It’s kark-o’clock in the morning and I’ve gone and picked the wrong pocket, right? Got drawn in by some shiny boots and gold necklaces and now I’m paying for it, because, _hello_ , bodyguards. And they’ve got blasters, and it’s still Hutt-town so a bit of blaster fire is to be expected during any festival. Probably it’d be considered a dull affair if there wasn’t at least one firefight, come to that.”

He’s working the glove off now, unhurried, one finger at a time, and Rabbit is breathing like a man bracing for an amputation, jaw tight as if there’s a belt between his teeth. It’d probably be kinder to pause here, to offer an out, but that isn’t what either of them wants. It’s a good night for too-much and too-close. The glove comes off, and Cobb drops it into his lap.

“So they’re gaining on me, right?” Cobb says, and touches the pad of Rabbit’s middle finger, the webbing between his thumb and index finger. He’d sort of thought the gloves might’ve prevented calluses, but he was wrong. They’ve both got rough hands, thick knuckles, a roadmap of scars. Different scars, different colors, but somehow the same. They look good together. _Survivor’s hands,_ the man behind the door had said. The man in the booth doesn’t say anything, just breathes loud and slow through his nose, and Cobb says, “There’s blood in my eyes, no idea where it’s coming from, and I’ve done something awful to my knee, but then someone’s got me by the elbow and they’re pulling me into an alcove, and I’m about to go for their eyes and their balls, right? But they’re not fighting. They’re just holding.” He chances a look up at Rabbit’s face. “This is where you come in, you’ll remember.”

There’s something oddly both hunted and carnivorous about those dark eyes now, a hunger in the nervous clench of the jaw, as if instead of running for its life that ash-rabbit in the marketplace had turned around and gone for Cobb’s jugular. Rabbit’s tongue flicks out to touch his split lip and he says, “Me?”

Cobb presses his thumb hard into the very center of Rabbit’s palm and smiles. “Yeah, you,” he murmurs. “Here’s what I see, once I stop trying to rip your face off. Youngish guy, not filled out yet, not quite fully cooked, bad dresser. Sorta soft and pointy at the same time, weird combo. Hungry like me, though. Prettiest eyes I ever saw. The kind of mouth that makes a guy wanna make promises he can’t keep.” 

“Is that... good?” Rabbit’s voice has gone rougher and drier, if possible, soft as a distant tectonic shift. There’s dirt ground into all the creases of his hand, and Cobb’s pinky finger follows the dark lines slowly, learning his terrain. 

“Pretty good, far as I’m concerned,” Cobb says airily, and grins. “C’mon, audience participation time. What do you see when you pull that stupid pickpocket out of the line of fire? Paint me a picture.” He’s never been plagued with an excess of humility.

Rabbit swallows, looks down at their joined hands, up at Cobb’s face, and quickly back down as if he’s been caught picking pockets himself. “Good, um, teeth. Smile, I mean. And. Hips,” he mutters, as if by saying it quietly enough he might be able to pretend someone else said it. Beneath the ground-in dirt, his neck has gone blotchy. “The... tilt of them. Arrogant. Defiant.” 

Cobb chuckles. “So you’re saying I’m an obnoxious bastard with crooked hips?” He turns Rabbit’s hand over so he can thumb at the scarred knuckles. Boxer’s knuckles, he thinks. 

“Yes.”

“Is that good?”

“Pretty good,” Rabbit says, and Cobb glances up just in time to catch the corners of his soft, serious mouth twitching upward for just an instant. Rabbit says, “That kind of obnoxious, it’s on purpose. Fought-for. Earned.”

It’s possible Cobb’s gone red, he can’t be sure. He’s been warm all over since the story began, and he’s seized with the desire to call this man more than _rabbit_ — _sweet thing_ would suit him, or something darker, something stronger in some language Cobb hasn’t learned yet. He wants to sink his teeth into the meat of this man’s palm, into all the soft places he can find, chew him up and swallow him. But he’s got a story to tell, and if nothing else, he’s got enough manners not to talk with his mouth full.

“Anyway, we’re in this alcove, this little alleyway,” he says, rubbing his thumb over the ragged edges of Rabbit’s short fingernails. There’s a dark half-moon of dirt under each one. “And you’ve got me all gathered up against the wall, and you’re hiding me, you don’t know me but you know an unfair fight, and I sorta think you might kiss me but you don’t. You’re just leaning close, just pretending, just so they overlook us. And they do, they pass us by. Just another couple of drunkards getting close in a quiet corner.” He wraps his hand around Rabbit’s wrist again and tugs, insistent. “Come here. Come sit.” 

Rabbit’s face has gone funny, sort of hazy and intense all at once, and it seems to take him a moment to realize that the command wasn’t part of the story. “I _am_ sitting,” he says, eyebrows bunching in confusion. He looks down, as if to confirm for himself that this is true. 

“No, come sit _here._ ” Cobb releases Rabbit’s hand to shove empty glasses aside, and slaps the table in front of him. “Right here.” They can’t be more than three feet apart, but the distance is still criminal.

Rabbit examines the empty tabletop in silence for a long moment, mouth pinching as if he’s performing some complicated series of calculations in his head. And then he’s sliding out of his seat, standing up only to sit on the edge of the table instead, and he’s swinging his legs carefully up and around, and Cobb finds his hips bracketed by dusty boots, knees rising like mountains on either side of him. Rabbit is looking down at him from his perch atop the table, chin tipped at an angle that can’t be anything other than a challenge. 

“Yeah, there you are,” Cobb croons, and cups Rabbit’s kneecaps in his hands, squeezes them once. He could push Rabbit’s legs wider apart, or draw them closer together to hug his ribcage, but he doesn’t move them, not yet. 

This close, Rabbit stinks overwhelmingly of sweat, stale and new, of hot iron, fried wiring and distressed machinery. It’s a wild, unpretty smell, and Cobb is torn between breathing through his mouth and crawling beneath the layers of filthy traveling clothes to get closer to the source. 

“What happens next?” Rabbit says softly, leaning forward just a little.

“Hard to say, exactly,” Cobb says, fingers trailing down Rabbit’s shinbones and back up. His eyes are level with where he suspects Rabbit’s navel might be, somewhere beneath the shroud of his poncho. He wonders if the flesh there would twitch if he touched it, a nervous-animal jump. He says, “Sometimes you just realize you’re so tired, you know? And you’re hungry, just starving. I mean in a universal ‘you’ sense, not _you_ -you. But I guess in this case that applies, too. And if you’re lucky, there’s someone close, someone convenient and pretty, and you just— _swallow_ them.” 

Now he does guide Rabbit’s knees apart, spreads him out all wide and helpless, and Rabbit’s hands are white-knuckling the edges of the table and he might not be breathing anymore. Cobb slides his hands up Rabbit’s inner thighs slowly, appreciating the quiver of tension and potential violence in the muscle there.

“Just two hungry boys in an alley, you know?” He’s whispering again, and they’re stuck in a staring contest now, the two of them. Whoever blinks first loses. The man behind the ‘fresher door all those months ago had said yes when Cobb asked if his eyes were dark, and they are. A beautifully simple truth. “You’re stronger than me even then, I think, even when we’re young, and maybe you think you’re in control at first, but you said it yourself—I’m obnoxious.” 

And then Cobb’s left hand is petting the sharp line of Rabbit’s hipbone and the right is between Rabbit’s legs, and he’s warm here, high-noon hot even through the thick fabric of his trousers. Cobb kneads him gently, takes the measure of him against the flat of his palm, teases at the fly of his trousers. Rabbit is quiet even in this, in the way many hard-living men are, miserly with his noises and almost perfectly still even as he hardens quickly under Cobb’s ministrations. But his face, the aching honesty of it—his mouth, his eyebrows, his eyes—now that’s loud and clear, that’s _poetry._

This is the point at which telling stories to this man seems to get difficult every time, but Cobb’s determined to deliver. 

“It’s not gratitude, you know, so get that out of your head right now. Not a thank-you kiss for a hero. It’s more like, hmm, a shared meal between new friends,” he purrs, feeling for the fastenings of Rabbit’s trousers without ever breaking eye-contact. “And I think maybe you knew before you even grabbed my arm, before you even pulled me out of the line of fire, that your night would go this way, that you’d be breaking bread with the guy with the stupid ponytail, so to speak. You knew you’d have my teeth in your throat before you could even say ‘nice night for it,’ that you’d let me get my hands all over you a little bit like this—” 

Finally he’s worked open Rabbit’s trousers, and yeah, maybe he can’t see exactly what’s going on down there on account of the stupid poncho that keeps falling in the way, but damned if Rabbit’s cock doesn’t feel perfect in Cobb’s hand, a very comfortable fit. The word _ergonomic_ pops into his head, and he has to squash a mildly hysterical giggle quickly to avoid spoiling the mood. 

Anyway, what matters is that this, now, this is what finally pulls a ragged gasp from Rabbit’s throat, and Cobb swears that small sound is tied by a golden string to his fucking brain-stem.

He’s still feeling mean, though, just a little bit, just enough to give the guy’s pigtails a good yank, so he pulls his hand back for just a second, barely long enough to make Rabbit’s face go all desperate and tragic, then Cobb spits into his hand, as much saliva as he can muster anyway, and gets back to work. 

“And really, you’re an accommodating sort of guy, at least when somebody’s really in need. And let me tell you, in that alley, on that night, I am surely in _need_ ,” he says hoarsely. He has to press on with the story, has to keep his mouth in the gutter because if he doesn’t, he’s certain he’ll say something truly stupid. “Oh, you know I’m all rattled and cold and keyed-up and I need some warm soft place to crawl inside, yeah, I think you’re more than happy to invite me in.” Cobb’s free hand is on Rabbit’s inner thigh, and he can’t help but squeeze hard, hoping he might manage to leave a few pretty bruises that’ll last. 

In some rational sliver of his mind, he’s distantly aware that the cantina door is wide open, that anyone could walk by and see him rummaging around beneath some stranger’s clothes and there’d be no mistaking what they’re up to, but he can’t find it in himself to care. It’s all just seasoning for the story, anyway, just fuel for their urgency.

It should be awkward, maybe even off-putting, the way Rabbit just sits there clutching the edge of the table, staring all big-eyed and surprised as Cobb’s hand begins to move in earnest, jerking him slow and tight and lazy beneath the ridiculous poncho. But buried somewhere beneath his heavy breaths is a continuous low, needy sound that somebody ought to distill and bottle and sell for astronomical prices in the Core. 

“Be quicker and easier to bend you over something, yeah, and fun for everyone, sure, but what a waste, with eyes like yours. A mouth like that. No, I’m gonna find somewhere clean enough to lay you out on your back, gonna make sure you’re looking me in the eyes when I find the right spot inside you, when I fold you right in half. You’re quiet, that’s fine, I get it, but maybe you’d get talkative given the right incentive, what do you think?” Distantly, Cobb wonders when he strayed into future tense, into could-be-maybes instead of might-have-beens. He’s too caught up to care. He’s always liked the sound of his own voice, always enjoyed his own stories. He “And I’m gonna be close enough that I can fucking taste every letter when you tell me your name is—”

“Din.” The single syllable is carried on a shuddering exhale.

“No,” Cobb says, grinning even as his stomach flips inside-out. “I told you, it’s Rabbit. I remember. You told me. C’mon, Rabbit, don’t ruin the story.”

For a second, it seems as if Rabbit—Din, _Din_ —might argue, but a particularly cruel twist at the leaking head of him has him nodding helplessly, mouthing _Rabbit_ over and over like he’s trying to memorize a prayer.

“Anyway, Rabbit, the nice thing about us being young in this one is that—”

A sharp, startled cry drowns out the rest of Cobb’s words, and Rabbit is hunching over, shuddering violently, spilling hot and sloppy over Cobb’s fist. Cobb does an admittedly poor job of stroking him through it, but in all fairness, he’s a bit distracted just watching. 

“Well,” he says to the dark crown of Rabbit’s bowed head. “I guess that’s as good a place to end the story as any.” 

Rabbit takes a deep, unsteady breath, clears his throat and looks up. “Uh, sorry,” he mumbles, face going dark beneath his patchy, overgrown scruff. 

Cobb doesn’t remember that his hand is still wrapped around Rabbit until he’s being gently but firmly nudged away. Still feeling ever so slightly cheated out of the end of his own story, Cobb makes sure to carefully wipe his hand off on Rabbit’s clothes before pulling away entirely. He grins his crookedest grin, the one he knows from experience will let him get away with most anything. “That’s the quintessential Tatooine experience, you know,” he says, spreading his arms smugly across the backrest of the booth. “Coming in your poncho, I mean.”

“Thanks, then, I guess.” Rabbit huffs a wry little laugh, and oh, that is familiar, though Cobb can count on one hand the number of times he’s heard it.

“So,” Cobb says, leaning back and letting his legs fall open all slow and deliberate. “It’s Din, is it?”

There’s nothing even remotely rabbitlike in the way Rabbit’s eyes narrow, nothing timid about the slow way he removes his other glove and leans forward to seal his broad, hot hand over Cobb’s mouth. 

“No,” he says, low and smooth, all predator, no more prey. “It’s _Rabbit_. I told you, remember?” 

There are good reasons to live way the hell out here, Cobb reflects. The quiet, for one. Quiet places, quiet people, these things suit a talker like Cobb just fine, a man who’s spent a lifetime talking himself into existence. It’s all raw out here, endless canvas asking for a brush. There’s a hand on his mouth and a hand on his cock and the man they belong to will accept any name Cobb might give him, any story he might construct, because you don’t come out to a place like this unless you’re hoping someone will pick out your stitching and make something new out of the scraps of you. 

An urgent ache is building in Cobb’s wrists, his knees, his crooked hips, and he’s breathing hard against the hand over his mouth and he’s thinking about the first time he ever heard that sound, the real first time, that hum of an unfamiliar speeder bearing a thousand potential stories into town. When he comes, he’s thinking of dragons and dragonslayers, of languages made for hands only, of the way firelight in strange company can write endless strange histories across the surface of silver armor.

* * *

They leave the cantina together, locking the door behind them. There’s a broken-down speeder cooling in the road outside, and they let it be. It’ll still be there in the morning.

Cobb takes the Mandalorian home. Neither of them are going to get any sleep tonight, not for a while yet.

Instead, they sit on the roof sharing sour wine and dry crackers because the night is cool and still and the sky is lousy with stars and distant spacecraft. Together, they take the armor out of the dusty duffel bag and polish it, piece by piece. They’re both still filthy, still sticky and obvious, but it’s alright for now. Nobody else is awake to see. 

The light of the two visible moons dances lazily across the pauldron Din is tending to, and in the reflected glow the lines of him are soft and indistinct, as if a strong wind might blow him away like dust. “I’m going to put it back on,” he says, thumbing a strange insignia on the pauldron.

“What, now?” 

“No,” Din says. “In the morning, I think.”

Cobb hears the potential for a lie in this statement, the potential for truth, and hums quietly. He’s got the helmet in his lap, settled in the center of his crossed legs, and he’s polishing the faceplate. He’s been allowed this much ownership of this man, and he’s grateful.

Peachy dawn is oozing into the sky by the time they finally replace the armor in its bag and retreat into the soft dark of the house. 

“Why’d you keep driving by, anyway? Why not just come see me?” Cobb asks. They’re clean now, as clean as a weak sonic shower can get you anyway, and Cobb’s narrow bachelor’s bed isn’t near big enough for the two of them but they’re making it work. Din’s about as adept a cuddler as a bundle of rebar, so Cobb’s taken it upon himself to arrange Din’s limbs for him, to wrap himself in Din’s arms and draw one of Din’s legs over his. The Mandalorian is relaxing into it, though, inch by cautious inch.

Din, still woefully overdressed but much less rank now, exhales hotly on the back of Cobb’s neck. “I don’t know,” he says. 

“How long were you really out there, anyway? Just doing laps like that and making the locals nervous.”

“Four nights. Three days.”

Cobb, giddy and exhausted in equal measure, snuffles a laugh and draws Din’s arm tighter around his abdomen. “You’re shy, is what you are. Worried I might take one look at you and that silly mustache and that _nose_ and turn you out.”

Din’s frown is almost audible. “What’s wrong with my nose?”

“Nothing at all. I’m fascinated by it.”

“Oh. Thank you?”

“Mostly by how you ever managed to fit it under a helmet.”

Cobb’s hip is still stinging minutes later from a surprisingly catty pinch when Din asks, “So who was it actually? The person who hid you in Mos Espa that night.” Tentative fingers brush Cobb’s temple, tracing the old scar there.

Sure, maybe that night was cold, long, and Cobb’s head wound bled for hours and scabbed badly, got infected later. Maybe it was a lonely night, just one of many, unremarkable for it. That doesn’t have to be the truth. “Weren’t you listening when I was telling the story?” he says, and rubs the smooth surface of one of Din’s fingernails with the pad of his thumb, over and over. 

A beat, a litany of unasked questions, and then, “It was a good story.” Din tucks his head in closer and his hair tickles the shell of Cobb’s ear. “Will you tell me more about him? Um, me. Rabbit, I mean. More stories.”

“Thought you were going to put your armor back on in the morning.” Cobb’s eyes are drifting shut.

Din makes a low, drowsy sound. “Better not. Better wait a bit. I think there might be a sandstorm coming.”

There isn’t. Cobb’s got Tatooine in the marrow of his bones and the linings of all his guts, for good or bad, for whatever that’s worth, and a Tatooine boy always knows when a sandstorm is coming. There’ll be nothing but clear skies and soft winds for days and days.

“Think you might be right,” Cobb says, and for a little while at least, he’s perfectly quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3 hit me up on twitter (@flamingo_tooth) or tumblr (everyoneissquidwardinpurgatory)


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